Deserting the Desert – Chapter 7, Prologue 33

K’ip’s achievements on behalf of the Ce’nnef war effort might not have been very helpful for his karma stat, but at least K’ip and Si’ri got a quick and marginally comfortable ride to the other end of the desert out of it, cutting many days from their travel schedule – and countless random encounters with weird desert creatures. On top of that, K’ip got some bling…but, in view of that whole karma thing, it might be better not to wave that in peoples’ faces too much. >_>

With the desert behind them, our heroes…sorry, our hero and his not-officially-a-risk-sharing-party-member companion fairy…embark on what is already the final leg of their journey to their destination – now also revealed to be the lost… uh, abandoned city of Ad’nanapart.

Lost cities used to be prime locations for finding legendary, plot-important artifacts, and abandoned cities (often the same) have taken over that function…ever since Google Maps and similar software completely undermined the status of lost cities. >_> Oh, those glorious, long-gone days where a legendary lost city could remain blissfully lost and safely legendary until somebody went to the effort of actually going there and finding it. The decline of the concept started when Graziani rolled into Kufra in 1931, and nowadays there are only few spots left were a legendary lost city could linger…deep in the jungle, perhaps, but otherwise only underground or underwater. I’m actually not quite sure whether this fantasy world should really have some equivalent to Google Maps, but I thought better safe than sorry…so Ad’nanapart is an abandoned city now, that’s a distinction that’s hard to take away without actually going there.

4 Replies to “Deserting the Desert – Chapter 7, Prologue 33”

Man, I get bogged down at work and don’t check this comic right as you post some really good stuff… :C

Still, I guess video game makers, unlike B-movie makers, do like their vehicles to be correct in their details and appropriate to the setting and period. Even the Sd.Kfz. 251 command vehicle is an “Ausführung C”, which is the correct version for the fighting in the Western Desert… Same goes for the M3 Lees, the Matilda II and the Pz.III Ausf.G.

I’m not surprised you liked this little excursion outside the bounds of a fantasy setting. =)

But, yeah, there’s really no contest there – it seems like any videogame with a WWII setting has at least one developer somewhere who cares about getting the details of uniforms and equipment correct, and some seem to have several. Whereas with movies…I think it’s even worse with tanks and AFVs than with aircraft. There are prop companies in Hollywood that have a lot of surplus US material, and also acquired some Soviet stuff after the dissolution of the USSR, but the handful of Axis tanks left in running condition are prized museum pieces…add to these difficulties that movie people often don’t seem to care (I mean, I acknowledge the difficulties of getting an authentic vehicle, but where’s the excuse for not even painting the stand-in in the right color?), and it’s small wonder videogames are miles ahead of movies on this front.

This reminds me of a bad Spider-Man game I saw on AGDQ or SGDQ, that despite all its gameplay problems was surprisingly comic-accurate… And at the end, the game credits mention having a “Spidey consultant”.

And whoever that was, they were probably very happy of getting to add that particular credit to their resume. A fan’s fondest wish come true, likely… XD

Which reminds me of the movie “Solomon and Sheba”, which listed an “orgy sequence advisor” in their credits. You have to wonder what their qualifications were…and whether they had helped out the producer with that kind of thing before… XD